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Thursday, 23 July 2015

Ready-made WinPE ISOs (from Gandalf)

If you are looking for ready-made WinPE ISOs (with UEFI-boot support too), check out the Gandalf's WinPE builds of WinPESE8.1 (Google for 'Gandalf WinPE').

Win8.1U1SE_x86 updateable (UEFI+MBR bootable) - This PE had external Portable Apps and Programs folder, allowing you to add more programs.

There is even a dual-boot x86/x64 ISO (64-bit UEFI + 32&64-bit MBR booting)...

The dual-PE ISO has an external Portable Apps folder, so you could add more apps into it.

As these are WinBuilder ISOs, you either need to mess about with INI files, etc. (see previous blog) OR just drag-and-drop the ISO onto the MPI_FAT32 Desktop shortcut to make a .imgPTN file.

The advantages of using a .imgPTN file is that it is easy to make and it will support UEFI-booting too. In addition, if you make the size of the .imgPTN file larger than is needed, you could add more portable apps to the CSM-mode partition (but don't try to install any or add them to the Desktop because WinPE runs from a RAM drive (X:) and so they won't be there on the next boot!).

You can change the file extension to .imgPTNAUTO and it will go straight to the CSM menu without any user prompt about changing partitions.

You can use 'set AUTOCSM=1' in the \_ISO\MyE2B.cfg file to make all .imgPTN* files go straight to the CSM menu without a user prompt.

If you use the file extension .imgPTNLBA23, then if your E2B HDD drive has a 2nd partition, it will also be accessible from WinPE. You can thus store a range of portable apps on the 2nd E2B partition and they will be accessible by all of your .imgPTN payloads.

This .imgPTN file was made using MPI Tool Kit v0.051 and so has 32-bit Clover UEFI-boot support.

P.S. Not sure that it is legal for 'Gandalf' to provide these Microsoft OS downloads, so get them while you can!

Note: In some cases, you may need to increase the suggested size recommended by MPI by approx 300MB as the .ISO file may be highly compressed.